At last, turning from literature, we spoke with the gentle abbate of our day's adventures, and eagerly related that of the Ecelino prisons. To have seen them was the most terrific pleasure of our lives. "Eh!" said our friend, "I believe you." "We mean those under the Villa P----." "Exactly." There was a tone of politely suppressed amusement in the abbate's voice; and after a moment's pause, in which we felt our awful experience slipping and sliding away from us, we ventured to say, "You don't mean that those are _not_ the veritable Ecelino prisons?" "Certainly they are nothing of the kind. The Ecelino prisons were destroyed when the Crusaders took Padua, with the exception of the tower which the Venetian Republic converted into an observatory." "But at least these prisons are on the site of Ecelino's castle?" "Nothing of the sort. His castle in that case would have been outside of the old city walls." "And those tortures and the prisons are all--" "Things got up for show. No doubt, Ecelino used such things, and many worse, of which even the ingenuity of Signor P---- cannot conceive. But he is an eccentric man, loving the horrors of history, and what he can do to realize them he has done in his prisons." "But the custodian, how could he lie so?" Our friend shrugged his shoulders. "Eh! easily. And perhaps he even believed what he said." The world began to assume an aspect of bewildering ungenuineness, and there seemed to be a treacherous quality of fiction in the ground under our feet. Even the play at the pretty little Teatro Sociale, where we went to pass the rest of the evening, appeared hollow and improbable. We thought the hero something of a bore, with his patience and goodness; and as for the heroine, pursued by the attentions of the rich profligate, we doubted if she were any better than she should be. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote A: _Salti mortali_ are those prodigious efforts of mental arithmetic by which Italian waiters, in verbally presenting your account, arrive at six as the product of two and two.] POOR RICHARD. A STORY IN THREE PARTS. PART II.